Blank check company DFB Healthcare Acquisitions Corp., formed by investment firm Deerfield Management and led by a longtime health insurance CEO, said it raised $250 million in an initial public offering Friday to support the intended acquisition of a health care business.

A New York bankruptcy judge Friday said he would hold a hearing to address a Breitburn Energy Partners LP bondholder’s claim of conflicts of interest between a prospective stalking horse bidder, a Breitburn lienholder and Breitburn bankruptcy counsel Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP.

A proposed class of Kindred Healthcare Inc. shareholders filed a memorandum Friday in Delaware federal court supporting their motion to halt the progress of a $4.1 billion acquisition of the company by Humana Inc. and two private equity firms until alleged deficiencies in a proxy statement are cured.

Uber is reportedly getting ready to take a large stake in taxi and carpooling company Grab, Walmart is mulling a deal for a more than 40 percent stake in Flipkart, and $15 billion in financing is backing a Blackstone-led consortium’s $17 billion bid for Thomson Reuters’ financial and risk business.

Bass Berry & Sims PLC expanded its Nashville, Tennessee, group with the addition of a former Polsinelli PC attorney who brings experience advising on private equity acquisitions and other transactions in the health care industry as well as a background with compliance and False Claims Act suits.

With so much mergers and acquisitions news this week, you may have missed several deals announced in the last several days helmed by firms such as Sullivan & Cromwell LLP and Locke Lord LLP. Here, Law360 recaps the ones you might have missed.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday suspended trading in three penny-stock companies, questioning the accuracy of recent statements they all made claiming substantial acquisitions in assets tied to cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies.

A New York state judge expressed uncertainty at a hearing on Friday about whether she could consider a new motion to dismiss a German lender’s $45 million fraud suit against Lynn Tilton and her companies over its investments in two of her funds.

In this week's Taxation With Representation, Wyndham sold its European vacation rental business to Platinum Equity for $1.3 billion, LyondellBasell bought A. Schulman for $2.25 billion, Hoffman-La Roche proposed buying Flatiron Health for $1.9 billion, and Charles River Laboratories acquired MPI Research for $800 million.

Private equity continued to do large real estate deals in 2017, particularly foreign firms buying portfolios, and the 10 largest transactions of the year — each of which was north of $2 billion — got done with the help of a dozen law firms.

Though rival bids from third-party suitors rarely succeed, they can be discouraging after attorneys have spent months diligently working on an acquisition. However, there are ways lawyers can make it more likely their client will prevail, including by building protections against so-called interlopers into the original deal agreement.

Investors owning more than half of 6D Global Technologies Inc.’s stock have objected to a proposed settlement of derivative claims that the digital marketing company failed to stop a private equity firm’s CEO from manipulating its share price, telling a New York federal judge Wednesday that the corporate reforms spelled out in the deal are “utterly worthless.”

Thomson Reuters' chairman reportedly had concerns about the Blackstone-led offer for its financial and risk business, offshore drilling giant Seadrill is nearing a restructuring deal with bondholders and shipyards, and Petrobras set a late-March deadline for offers for a majority stake in a gas pipeline network.

Coming off a record-breaking 2017, initial public offerings by special-purpose acquisition companies are poised for another robust year but may fall below last year’s torrid pace, a hedge fund founder told a gathering of business people and lawyers Thursday in New York.

Attorneys for high-tech window company View Inc. urged a Delaware vice chancellor Thursday to set aside objections to a $60 million settlement in a suit with the company's founder, saying the objectors' claims were unfounded and the deal would avert crippling challenges to the company’s stock and capital structure.

A Delaware federal magistrate judge on Wednesday called for a suit brought by three investment funds against their former manager Lynn Tilton to be returned to state court, saying that Tilton's bid to rope in a national bank so federal courts would have jurisdiction was “objectively unreasonable.”

Bertram Capital on Thursday said its latest fund took in $500 million as the middle market-focused private equity firm looks to invest in the business services, consumer, and industrial and manufacturing sectors.

Expert Analysis

With investment dollars continuing to flow in 2018, high-growth food and beverage brands will have the opportunity to think strategically and creatively about the investors they work with and deal structure, says Will Bernat of Nutter McClennen & Fish LLP.

Late last year, the Sedona Conference released the third edition of its principles addressing electronic document production, updated to account for innovations like Snapchat and Twitter. It may be necessary for these principles to be updated more often in order to keep pace with technology, says Charles McGee III of Murphy & McGonigle LLP.

Last week, the District of Delaware raised eyebrows by ruling that documents provided to a litigation funder and its counsel in connection with their due diligence are categorically not attorney work product. Acceleration Bay v. Activision Blizzard seems to be a case of bad facts making bad law, says David Gallagher, investment manager and legal counsel for Bentham IMF.

Artificial intelligence tools can empower attorneys to work more efficiently, deepen and broaden their areas of expertise, and provide increased value to clients, which in turn can improve legal transparency, dispute resolution and access to justice. But there are some common pitfalls already apparent in the legal industry, say Ben Allgrove and Yoon Chae of Baker McKenzie.

Contractual nonreliance provisions, sometimes called “big boy” letters, have received their fair share of attention, but little attention has been paid to the effect forum selection and choice-of-law issues have on such provisions. The choice of where to litigate and which law will govern can significantly impact, if not conclusively determine, the outcome of a dispute, say Amy Park and Niels Melius of Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP.

In "Justice and Empathy: Toward a Constitutional Ideal," the late Yale Law School professor Robert Burt makes a compelling case for the undeniable role of the courts in protecting the vulnerable and oppressed​. But the question of how the judiciary might conform to Burt’s expectations raises practical problems​, says U.S. Circuit Judge Allyson Duncan of the Fourth Circuit. ​

As litigation funding becomes more widespread, greater complexity and variability in funding deals are to be expected. All claimants should consider certain key questions on the economics of single-case funding when considering or comparing funding terms, says Julia Gewolb of Bentham IMF.

Given the operational and security risks involved, and the substantial digital asset values transacted, the rise of distributed ledger technology and smart contracts will create new opportunities and responsibilities for transactional lawyers, say attorneys with Potter Anderson Corroon LLP.

Law firms claim they create client teams to improve service. Clients aren’t fooled, describing these initiatives as “thinly veiled sales campaigns.” Until firms and client teams begin to apply a number of principles consistently, they will continue to fail and further erode clients’ trust, says legal industry coach Mike O’Horo.

While a client’s visual impairment can create challenges for an attorney, it also can open up an opportunity for both attorney and client to learn from each other. By taking steps to better assist clients who are blind or visually impaired, attorneys can become more perceptive and effective advisers overall, say Julia Satti Cosentino and Nicholas Stabile of Nutter McClennen & Fish LLP.